Popular Woodworking 2009-04 № 175, страница 28

A Well-made Door

The door is rather wide, and the components of it are rather thin, so I paid careful attention to the joinery. The first step was to cut a VV'-wide by Vi6"-deep groove on one edge of the outer stiles and the top and bottom rails. The narrow intermediate stiles were grooved on both edges.

I made the grooves by passing the edges of the pieces over a stack dado set at the table saw, runningthe groovesall the way alongthe edges of the stock. The groove is located V4" in from the back of the door making it offset by Vis" in the ¹³/i6" material.

This meant all the grooving had to be done with the face against the saw fence, but from that point on there was no con fusion regarding which was the front and which was the back on the door parts; the fat side was out and the skinny side was in.

I set up the hollow-chisel mortiser with a V4" chisel and with the face of one of the stiles against the machine fence, 1 adjusted the fence so the chisel was aligned with the groove. I set the depth of the chisel to cut 1 Vi6" deep from the edge of the stiles and cut the four mortises in the outer stiles. 1 wasn't sure how my material would behave, so 1 kept the ends of the mortises 1" away from the ends of the stiles to keep the ends from blowing out.

The top rail is the same width as the outer stiles, so the same machine settings could be used to make the mortises for the intermediate stiles. The lower rail is wider, so 1 had to readjust the depth of cut before cutting the last two mortises.

1 used a wheel cuttinggauge to define and

mark the shoulders of the tenons. The fine cut left by the gauge is actually the finished edge of the shoulder. I made the cheek cuts for the tenons on the table saw using a tenoning jig that rides the saw's fence, and used the sliding crosscut table to cut the shoulders.

To avoid over-cutting the tenon shoulders, I left a little bit of material on the inside corner. I used the cuttinggauge to remove this and refined the fit of the tenons with a paring chisel and a rasp.

The groove for the panelscontinues beyond

Finish by hand. A few cuts with a chisel complete the end of the dado for the top and bottom shelves. The front edge of the shelf is notched and ends '/2" past the end of the dado. The notch is cut by hand with a dovetail saw.

Dual-purpose tool. The cutter on the gauge removes the remaining material where the tenon cheek and shoulder meet. After scoring it with the gauge, pare with a chisel.

Drop-in measurement. With the adjustable square sitting on top of the groove in the stile, the blade is bottomed out to obtain the exact measurement for the depth of the groove.

Easy transfer. Setting the end of the square's blade against the shoulder, and marking with a pencil at the bottom of the stock, transfers the depth of the groove to the haunch in the tenon.

Faster by hand. Cutting the haunch by hand is faster than setting up to make these cuts by machine. Only the end of the haunch will be seen in the finished door, so this is a good place to practice making cuts by hand.

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